Dennis Prager Pretty Sure Unvaxxed Morons More Shunned Than Gay Men During 1980s AIDS Crisis

Time for a history lesson, we guess!

We hesitate to say things like "Dennis Prager has outdone himself," because the man is as ignorant as he is self-assured as he is a mediocre white bigot. 

But this is up there.

You'll remember that Prager recently announced that his bugchaser lifestyle had paid off and that his unvaccinated gross body was full of COVID. Because Wonkette's thoughts and prayers are so powerful, he appears to have survived the ordeal.

And now Prager is back to bellyaching, because he's just never in his entire life seen anyone treat ANYBODY like pariahs the way they treat unvaccinated idiots, the way they're shunned by society. Can you imagine, Dennis Prager asked, if they had treated gay men like this during the AIDS crisis? CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Dennis Prager: "During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users...had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are? But it would've been inconceivable"pic.twitter.com/GQsOq4X63u

— Jason Campbell (@Jason Campbell) 1636410010 

"Anywhere that you have people who are governed by fear of global warming – the idiotic, irrational, sick fear of extinction of the biosphere – I mean, you understand the nonsense that we live with?

"If we survive this as a free country, historians will just ask, 'How did this happen? How did people get governed by irrational fears?'

"Whether it is of the non-vaccinated, who are the pariahs of America as I have not seen in my lifetime any pariah group like this.

"During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users, if had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are?"

Can you IMAGINE?

And nobody answered Dennis Prager, because an entire generation of gay men was dead and unable to answer, largely because of the exact stigma Dennis Prager, a mediocre white bigot, thinks didn't exist.

JoeMyGod shares this picture of a Moral Majority mailer from the time:

 The Wrap collects a few examples of what gay men and others with HIV and AIDS had to endure back in the 1980s, starting with how Rush Limbaugh had a segment where he made fun of people dying of it, while playing Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love That Way Again." Limbaugh, as Prager might remember, commenced burning in hell for all eternity this past February.

There was William F. Buckley suggesting "AIDS tattoos" to identify people with the virus. Where? "[I]n the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."

Was there a sharp rise in violence against gays at the time? Check. 

Flashback to 1982, and here is Larry Speakes, Ronald Reagan's press secretary, answering a journalist asking if the Reagan administration was doing anything about this mysterious new disease:

"It's known as gay plague," the journalist asked. Some people in the room chuckled.

"I don't have it, do you?" Speakes snapped back, as the room erupted in laughter. "Do you? You didn't answer my question. How do you know?"

Reagan wouldn't even say the word "AIDS" until 1985.

Here's a whole entire video about the Reagan administration's (non)response to the AIDS crisis:

 www.youtube.com 

And how did Americans feel about it? Gallup has some polling data from the time:

In 1985, the vast majority of Americans (80%) said it was "probably true" that most people with AIDS were homosexual men. More than a quarter of Americans (28%) reported that they or someone they knew had avoided places where homosexuals might be present as a precaution to avoid contracting AIDS — and this number grew to 44% by 1986.

And here Dennis Prager is offended that in 2021, people might be simply trying to avoid Walmarts in pig turd settings where unvaccinated idiots congregate.

Gallup continued:

As the spread of AIDS continued, Gallup found some Americans expressing judgmental views about those who had contracted the disease. In two separate polls in 1987, roughly half of Americans agreed that it was people's own fault if they got AIDS (51%) and that most people with AIDS had only themselves to blame (46%). Between 43% and 44% of Americans in 1987 and 1988 believed that AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior.

Still, a solid majority (78%) agreed that people with AIDS should be treated with compassion. But most Americans (60%) also agreed that people with AIDS should be made to carry a card noting they had the virus, and one in three (33%) agreed that employers should be allowed to fire employees who had AIDS. Twenty-one percent of Americans said people with AIDS should be isolated from the rest of society.

And what about people with AIDS who weren't gay? Back to The Wrap, to remind us of the Ryan White story:

Ryan White, an Indiana 14-year-old who was infected due to a blood transfusion and diagnosed with AIDS in 1984. He was forced to sue for the right to attend school, endured ostracization and death threats and his family had to move several times before they found a community that would accept them. He also endured frequent homophobic insults . (He was not himself gay.)

When his case became high profile, he was used as an example of "innocent" AIDS victims, AKA people who didn't "deserve" it because they didn't contract it through actions society disapproved of. It was so common that White's mother, Jeane Hale, spoke out against it two years after his death .

"Ryan always said, 'I'm just like everyone else with AIDS, no matter how I got it.' And he would never have lived as long as he did without the gay community. The people we knew in New York made sure we knew about the latest treatments way before we would have known in Indiana," she told the New York Times.

We could go on and on and on and on, because these are just some quick examples we found in a few minutes of googling.

So go fuck yourself, Dennis. And yeah, we're gonna keep treating voluntarily unvaccinated people who are spreading airborne viruses to innocent people like pariahs. Deal with it.

[ The Wrap / Gallup / NBC News / h/t JoeMyGod ]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter .

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